More equal societies are happier, healthier and wealthier. More equality doesn’t mean taking something away from one section of the population to give to another. It means more to go round. In co-founding the Women’s Equality Party in 2015, I was pursuing this vision, and we have seen many successes, growing a movement as well as a party that puts women’s equality at the heart of the debate in every election we contest. I’m asking for your vote to bring our voice to Europe.

WE are needed now more than ever.

Because across Europe and the UK, regressive populism is on the rise, promoting a politics of hatred and division. As ever, it is targeting women and minorities. We see it in the efforts to roll back women’s rights, in particular reproductive rights, which have already been curtailed in Poland, in Italy and in Austria.

Because one of the worst effects of globalisation has been the rise in human trafficking: the trade in people without legal pathways to migration. The majority of people trafficked across Europe are women and it is for sexual exploitation.

Because we are in the midst of a global climate emergency that is already causing devastation the world over, particularly in the poorest countries and hitting the poorest people, the majority of whom are women.

The solutions to these problems lie in collaborative working, in breaking down barriers between nations, not breaking away. And they lie in the understanding that gendered problems need gendered solutions.

I am standing for election to bring that perspective to the European Parliament, to build alliances with other parties from the UK and the EU, and to work with the other feminist political parties in Europe to forge new coalitions across old divisions.

I am calling for a new social deal in the EU, one that makes equality as important as the economy and understands the links between the two. I will work with other MEPs to establish minimum living standards across the EU that lift women out of poverty as part of the solution to the global challenges we face.

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